Category: ENTP traits

I had no idea burn-outs are contagious. But that’s the only explanation I can come up with for the staggering amount of friends I’ve seen suffering from it this year. And while watching them struggle made me feel crushed and powerless, it also gave me lots of opportunities to observe causes, symptoms and antidotes.

Based on these observations, I believe the MBTI-typology can give us more insight into burn-outs, specifically:

Less than a week till a new year starts, and though it’s a rather arbitrary moment to develop new resolutions, plenty of people still do it. For many ENTPs, one of the most important resolutions of 2017 (and frankly each year before that) is

Get shit done. Follow through on ideas and actually finish things.

Good news: this is perfectly possible and you don’t even have to become an XSXJ in the process. However, the “how to” might be not what you expected.

Nobody likes talking more than ENTPs. That being said, we might seem utterly bored listening to your account of your day at work, gossips or news about sports or politics. In my experience, this can cause problems especially if you have Se high in your stack. We don’t really care about what happens in real life. We might pretend we care, out of love for you, but that’s not the same. It’s not that we don’t care about you, we do. It’s just that we don’t see the point in discussing something that’s already happened. However, this might be important to you. The other way around, we love talking about abstract ideas, often hypothetical situations and so on, while you probably couldn’t care less. This can become a big problem, but there is a way out, as long as you’re both willing to work on it.

Last week I was too busy writing other stuff, and I actually wanted to tell you all about it today, but a different topic came to mind and it’s so important I’ve decided to write about that one instead: ENTP’s ideas of trust and lying.

My personal trust pattern goes a bit like this: I meet someone, based on my intuition I either trust them or I don’t. If I trust them, they can mess up a lot, and I’ll still trust them in that I’ll welcome them into my life and will forgive their mistakes. However, if I catch them lying to my face without a clear reason even once, even with something small, my trust is gone. And yes, extreme as that sounds, this includes practical jokes.

Nobody likes liars, of course, but ENTPs have a problem with them on a whole new level. If you’re hanging out with an ENTP, even a small lie might break the trust between the two of you, no matter how close you are. That’s not because we’re super sensitive (and remarkably it’s also not because we value honesty over everything, it’s not like we never lie ourselves, and yes that makes us hypocrites). Quite the opposite, it’s a logical, though often subconscious, thing.

One of the most common misconceptions about ENTPs is that we don’t use lists. You know, stuff like task lists. Being a huge fan of lists (and currently mastering the art of bullet journaling) I’ve been wondering if this trait of mine was characteristically non-ENTP. But you know what? I don’t think it is.

Here’s the thing with lists (and also the reason I tell people not to take quantitative personality tests too seriously): there’s a variety of reasons to use them. Many people mistakenly believe that using lists is a sign of ‘J’: lists are seen as a way to create clarity, define a plan that is to be followed. And I’m not going to argue: they certainly can be. For me, it’s different.

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Welcome to Sensing Sage! This website is for curious thinkers with a strong intuition and the ability to drive practically anyone up the wall with their love for discussions. In short: it's a home for ENTPs. Take a look around. If you're suffering from a "what the hell is this place", please visit these pages to find out more about...